Nothing To See Here
Move right along
Finland has launched a probe after 69 surface-to-air Patriot missiles were found in a ship bound for the Chinese port city of Shanghai, police said.
“An investigation found 69 Patriot missiles, explosive material and propelling charges,” a police statement said.
The missiles, produced by US firm Raytheon, were discovered following a customs search on the British-registered Thor Liberty, owned by Danish firm Thorco, at the port of Kotka, about 120 kilometres (75 miles) from Helsinki.
I’m sure it’s just a delivery of fireworks that Clinton and Gore promised them years ago.
“Of course, there are legal transports of weapons or defence material [through Finland] but in this case the cargo was marked as containing fireworks,” she told Finnish media. “That is quite unusual.”
See? Happy Farookin’ New Year!
Military Thingies, Politics, World Stuff | Mr. Bingley | 
December 22, 2011 7:04 am
Subscribe
Seriously, how many Patriot missile systems are out there that we can’t figure out who owns these?
Is it racist to think this is worth a closer look?
You have to think that China was not the final destination for these little critters. I’m pretty sure they have enough of their own. Also, I find it unusual that the smugglers would mark the containers as carrying “fireworks”. Does anyone in the world make more fireworks than the Chinese? Why would whoever was behind this think it believable that China would be importing fireworks?
PATRIOT MISSILES? I’d love to see who owns those. The story behind this will be interesting.
Somebody has some ‘splaining to do. I’m sure some supply officer is soiling his pants about now.
Weren’t there a bunch of S/A missiles that went missing in Libya, during their conversion from Dictatorship to Muslim Brotherhoodism?
Yep, there were, Syd, but those were all shoulder fired missiles, SA7s I think. It’s a real worry, as those can bring down an airliner, easy.
The Patriot is NOT shoulder fired. Stealing 69 of those puppies smacks of a major conspiracy. And a major worry, as those are anti-missile missiles, although they do work nicely against aircraft as well.
Thank you for that clarification. As you state, this does smack of major conspiracy status. I would hope that, with a properly applied rad hose, the movement of these weapons can be traced back to its source. I’m sure Mr. Holder is all over it.
Sounds like someone’s taken Viktor Bout’s place, now that he’s in the clink.
Well, they are fireworks.
Them babys are tagged, each and every one. Whoever supplied them (one of our “trusted allies”, no doubt) is looking at a total cut-off.
Or should be. With Obama, who knows?
Actually they were anti-aircraft missiles to start then they changed the software so they could shoot down ballistic missiles. These things are big too and of no use without the radar and supporting hardware unless of course you want to know how to build one yourself. I hear the Chinese are pretty good at that reverse engineering stuff.
Yeah, the Chicoms are good engineers, I’ll give them that. I forgot the Patriots were originally anti-aircraft, but they made their biggest splash in the anti-missile role.
But don’t surprised that they have the launch control systems as well; anyone who can steal 69 humongous missiles wouldn’t quibble at a few trucks.
I am very worried about this. You do not need 69 missiles to reverse engineer them. But you would need that many to determine how to neutralize them.
Neutralizing them isn’t particularly the big problem. They’re not meant as mass missile bombardment protection. The Chinese could overwhelm even a well defended site with rockets and missiles rendering Patriot defense somewhat moot in the large aspect. Course that isn’t the point that worries me.
Yes, now they will be able to neutralize missile defense assets in a tactical environments, but that’s not what really worries me. What does? Because the encrypted update systems they use on Patriots & AN/MSQ-104s isn’t horridly different from our UAV encryption systems more than likely. Keep in mind Raytheon makes the sensors say the global hawk along with the communications suite.
Combine that with Chinese gaining access to the Iran’s latest model plane collectors edition and our UAVs become susceptible to third parties not just via basic signal and gps jamming, which can be achieved via your local Afghan Radioshack by signal hijacking and override. Making our UAVs, already essentially moot in a conventional warfare sense, under threat from indig forces.
Given China and Russia’s anti-air and China’s now proven anti-space capabilities you’re looking at a hell of a problem. In the conventional warspace, China now looks to be able to disable our already weakened GPS coordinate structure (no precise long range munitions dependent on GPS), invade our cyber-structure through both state and state-proxy assets and negate our localized surveillance via global hawk and U-2s. Reactivating SR-71s like the first Gulf War would be useless as well given the current anti-air extra-stratospheric missile assets between China and Russia. If a conventional war were to spike and they made the first move we could be effectively blind in a far shorter period than we could respond. If combined with indig forces throughout the globe the thought process just gets worse.
Someone needs to hang. Literally.
I know nothing about missiles or guns (and learn a lot, thank you Swillers, from these conversations.) But it does seem to me that our country does not cut anyone off from the taxpayer-funded feed trough, even when they represent a threat to us. The bloodsuckers of the world know it (including American ones) and continue to feast on us because they can. Growl.